Journal Entry

Sunday, February, 2nd, 2009: Time Again

Today Virginia and I shoveled paths to both greenhouses and began cleaning for soon propagation. Virginia started the furnace to see if it still ran, and it did. She plugged the dust-covered, non-digital radio in and the classical music of Minnesota Public Radio crept again beneath the glass roof as we worked together, quietly, each thinking her own thoughts to herself, on our own sides of the greenhouse. We readied our work places according to our own rhythms and repetitive rituals.


The first thing we did was staple a plastic sheet over the door whose glass pane fell out and still lies shattered on the ground. Broken glass is ordinary in a greenhouse. Then we did what we do every year: sort pots and clear tables. This has become a familiar pattern I carry out at this time only to forget about it as the seasons progress until this time comes round again. It’s joyful. The mind says, “Oh yes, I remember,” and the body happily bumbles along.


Every February I gather up pots of herbs I left to wither in September and carry them out to the snow . They might resurge as the spring warms. I try to convince Virginia to move some of her supposedly dead asters out there too. She says, “You and I—we’re always betting on another chance. Maybe sometimes we give things too many chances.” But I carry out a tray of culinary sage anyway, and then a pot of Greek oregano. “This is second year sage!” I hear myself telling a customer. And the Arabic language teacher never did get this pot of oregano. It would be nice if it came back for her.


I get a bucket and empty dead pots of dirt into it, and then I restack my pots according to size. I haul full bags of potting soil from one table to another, knowing that as my inventory increases, I’ll only move them back again to get more space. And next time there won’t just be two bags but likely eleven. I brush the dirt off the tables, raising a considerable cloud of dust that will begin exiting my nose before I even make it home. The wooden table along the wall where my new seeds will germinate is ready for the task.


Virginia asks, “When would you like to get this place running?”


“Next week,” I say.



She bulks. “But then I will have to start the watering.” As if we could put this off, we settle for starting the furnace up two weeks from now and laugh. Once the watering begins, the gardener is committed, and watering itself is only the beginning. There is a brief period of bliss when we see those first plants spring up green and fresh under the yellow sunshine, but about two minutes later the urgent need to transplant ever bigger plants into ever bigger pots begins to hound our thoughts and chew away at every free minute of our schedules. The joy we feel today at being out here again will soon be replaced by worry that we won’t have enough time to keep up with hundreds and hundreds of plants. We’ll be racing against merciless deadlines of continuous growth.



But we can’t stop this anymore than we can stop breathing. It’s February, and the gardener’s inner clock has been sounding its alarm since the beginning of January. Against all reason, I carry a sinking feeling that perhaps it’s already too late for slow-growers like rosemary, lavender, oregano, thyme, and seed chive to be ready for markets in May. Virginia says that everything will be alright. Well, she should know, even if I don’t. Hopefully, between the two of us we know something.


Really, the gardener never rests. She plants and harvests in circular motion from February to November. (In fact, this year I had tomatoes still ripening in December.) But even in the death months of December and January the gardener is taking inventory, ordering seeds, containers, soils, and researching species she has never grown before. What will she try that’s new this year? She is busy strategizing over her competition, maintaining and securing new markets, and always dreaming up more comely and spacious displays. She puzzles over weeds and mulches and composts and manures; she ruminates over soil quality, blights, aphids, late frosts and hail. She considers landscapes and draws up plans. And all the while she is amassing new ideas for better efficiency that she will most likely never implement because she will be too busy.


A foreboding mass of dead brittle thistles covers the entire top of the wide plastic tables in the center of the green house. Those thistles spent their summer creeping up from the ground and by late July when we packed up our plants and flew from the inferno of the propagation house, the thistles continued on gleefully. Up they came through the grated tabletop; there they died when the season froze; and here they are today as we stand looking at them. “What we need around here is a sythe,” I say. I would swipe through them both above and below the table and sweep the dry prickers onto the floor. By and by the floor would eat them, just as it eats the broken glass. I couldn’t ask for a better floor. “We used to get ______vines in here,” I say to Virginia, “But this year we get thistles.” Virginia says she doesn’t remember. I don’t believe her. But as I move pots and trays around, I realize the ___ vines haven’t forsaken us. They are here tangled all up in the thistles. I yank them. I break them.


Vines. Snakes. This entangled table is the very one that the fox snake sometimes crawls up on. She has been living here with us for two years now, and I cannot feel easy about her, even though she is not poisonous, she will not eat me, and she keeps the rodents down and the rattlers away. She is a lovely snake, but already I am anticipating the apprehension I feel about her and promising myself that this year I will not feel it. I make this promise every year.


A spicy, clean aroma spreads around me. I like it, and it’s coming from the vines I am tearing off the tabletop. I throw a handful across for Virginia to smell. The stem, frayed from my ripping it, is wick and wet and green. It’s starting already.